1 Writers imagine a story to be happening in a particular place and time. The writer paints the reader a picture of the setting with words just as an artist paints pictures on canvas. Sights, sounds, colors, and textures are all vividly described to help the reader see the same setting that the writer sees in his mind.2 The setting is where and when the story takes place. Does it occur in the past, present, or future? Does it take place in a palace, a dungeon, or on a plantation? Or does it take place on Earth, the moon, or on another planet far away? The setting of a story affects the mood and the characters. It can act as a symbol. The setting can even be the antagonist in a person-against-nature conflict. A good example of this is the Gary Paulsen book, Hatchet.3 Eudora Welty, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, said, "Every story would be another story and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else ... Fiction depends for its life on place."